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Friday, November 13, 2015

We are all Addicts

Seth Haines was in the hospital with his wife, planning funeral songs for their not-yet two-year-old, when he made a very conscious decision: this was the last day he wanted to feel. That evening, he asked his sister to smuggle in a bottle of gin, and gave in to addiction.

But whether or not you’ve ever had a drop to drink in your life, we’re all looking for ways to stop the pain. Like Seth, we’re all seeking balms for the anxiety of what sometimes seems to be an absent, unresponsive God—whether it’s through people-pleasing, shopping, the internet, food, career highs, or even good works and elite theology. We attempt to anesthetize our anxiety through addiction—any old addiction. But it often leaves us feeling even more empty than before.

In Coming Clean, Seth Haines writes a raw account of his first 90 days of sobriety, illuminating how to face the pain we’d rather avoid, and even more importantly, how an abiding God meets us in that pain. Seth shows us that true wholeness is found in facing our pain and anxieties with the tenacity and tenderness of Jesus, and only through Christ’s passion can we truly come clean.

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Way to go Seth ....

He has been bold enough to speak the truth some many of us deny.

Our lives are filled with socially acceptable distractions to the excruciating pain that is part of life. We think it is OK if our addictions are not drugs, alcohol or pornography.

It is not OK to numb ourselves with TV, work, food, shopping, care taking, people pleasing, accomplishing.

We are OK. Our addictions are not OK.

Choosing to partition off the part of ourselves which is overflowing with the pain of living, is a slow and cruel punishment through internal isolation.

I pray we all stop and look at our daily routines of denial and addiction. The journey of a lifetime is to move from the fear of truth towards the pain of love.